Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Bad Plans

13 If
I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy
gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic
powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all
faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If
I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not
love, I gain nothing.

(1 Corinthians 13:1-3,
ESV)

As we continue down the road of 1 Corinthians 13 today,
where we began here,
I want to pick up on what Paul specifically warns about here. Recall that the
Corinthians were caught up in relentless self-promotion. They wanted to promote
themselves, and so advertised their own foolishness. Everyone knows someone
like that, so caught up in advertising themselves, but effectively marketing
their weaknesses above all else. Some of us have the unfortunate history of
being like that ourselves.

Paul, in the famous ‘love chapter,’ reveals that the problem
is a mistake in emphasis. We often think they have found the secret to success,
but we are really just grasping at the shadows of what God intends for us. In
these few verses, Paul excludes four distractors which give us a false
satiation, but cannot satisfy our real purpose.

It Isn’t How You Say
Things

“If I speak in the
tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a
clanging cymbal.”

This
one is more or less obvious. God is not impressed by how you say things. You
can have a mastery of your language, another language or even some language of
heaven, but all of that adornment amounts to nothing. It is just a cacophony, chaos
set to rhyme. An eloquent speaker with nothing to say is worse than neutral, like
the banging of an 8th grade rock band, he is an active annoyance. God
is fundamentally unimpressed by how well you say things, if it is not motivated
by love.

It Isn’t What You Say

“And if I have
prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge…”

This
may be a little harder to swallow. It is not just that God is unimpressed by
how you say things, scandalously, He is unimpressed by what you say. Maybe this
makes you a little uncomfortable – truth is truth, and the proclamation of
truth is good. But your assumptions about the way things must be are dispelled
by the way the apostle says things actually are. You can be a prophet - one who
speaks to people on God’s behalf, and God can still be displeased. How much
more does that humble you and I, if a direct word from God is not automatically
a fragrant sacrifice? You can understand every secret mystery of heaven and
earth and share them with the utmost clarity, but if you lack love, God finds
it deficient. It is a sacrifice, to be sure, but in the absence of love, it is
an offering made in an unacceptable way.

It Isn’t How You Do
Things

“…and if I have all
faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.”

Those
well acquainted with the book of James may have an answer to the above points:
of course God doesn’t care about what you say, but only about what you do! They
will try to argue that talk is cheap, but actions speak volumes. It is the way
you do things that really matters.

That
may be true, but Paul (on God’s behalf) is still not impressed. Even if you act
with a constant glow of faithful piety, the kind of undoubting trust in God
that moves mountains, you are nothing without love. Let me show you Paul’s
words again: “…if I have all faith… but have not love, I am nothing.” This
clashes against my comfortable worldview some, where I feel as if trusting God
ought to be the highest good. If faith is how we are saved, as Paul says time
and time again, how can something be a higher good than that? Unlike our plan for
our lives, however, God does not intend for us to simply be ‘saved and
satisfied.’ If you are going to be pleasing to God, you must continue to grow
in His service, and the currency of the Kingdom is love. Faith introduces you,
but it alone does not make you into anything substantial. Even if you do
everything in the proper way, with any motive other than love, God is still unmoved.

It Isn’t What You Do

“If I give away all I
have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain
nothing.”

In the
King James Version, the word charity is used in place of love throughout,
because several hundred years ago, charity referred to self-sacrificing love.
In modern vernacular, we have reduced the word charity to refer to its most
obvious manifestation: giving. That makes the idea here plain: if I have
external acts of charity, performed in faith, but do not undergird it with a
charitable spirit, I still do nothing favorable to God. If I give up my whole
self, turning my body over to the point of total consumption, but lack love in
it, it amounts to vanity and chasing after the wind.

The
last stronghold of self-defense is here destroyed. To matter in God’s sight, it
is not about how you say things, or about what you say. It is not about how you
do things or, wonder of wonders, what you do. God looks at your heart and asks “Is
my Spirit radiating love out of this life?”

A Higher Way

Paul’s
purpose here is to force us to abandon superficial solutions to metastasized problems.
The disease which causes our sinful, selfish behavior is burrowed far too deep
into us to simply treat the symptoms. God sees the stirring darkness within,
the selfishness and the pride that drive the things which seem to be good, and
He looks for us to treat the real problem. What we need is love that stretches
down to the depths of us and explodes out into the world around us. The kind of
love that loves the unlovable and extends to those who do not deserve it is the
only cure to our own unlovable hearts.

How can
we acquire this? Has Paul diagnosed a problem, but offered no cure? No, because
he refers to love as a gift. That is the whole point of the passage: love is
something that God gives to His children. If you have come to Him in faith, and
become a recipient of His love, He is already changing you and teaching you to
love. If you want to accelerate the process, just pray in specific, sincere
faith, and watch God change you from the inside out. If it seems too easy, have
you tried it? Have you even really wanted love before? May God grant you the
desire and the gift.